Wojciech Bogusławski

Wojciech Romuald Bogusławski (9 April 1757 – 23 July 1829)

was a Polish actor, theater director and playwright of the Polish
Wojciech Bogusławski
Enlightenment. He was the director of the National Theatre,
Warsaw, (Teatr Narodowy), during three distinct periods, as well as
establishing a Polish opera.[1] He is considered the "Father of Polish
theatre."[2]

Contents
Early life
Career
1778-1790
1790-1794
1794-1799 Before 1829. Artist unknown.
1799-1814
Born 9 April 1757
Death Glinno, Poznań
See also County
References Died 23 July 1829
(aged 72)
Warsaw, Poland
Early life Nationality Polish

Bogusławski was born into the minor nobility in Glinno, Poznań Occupation Actor, director,
County, the son of land regent Leopold Bogusławski and Anna dramatist
Teresa Linowski (see Pomian coat of arms. It is likely that he Known for Father of Polish
initially studied in Kraków before going on to attend a Piarist theatre
boarding school in Warsaw. In 1774 he traveled to the court of
Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk, where he took part in the amateur theatre performances organized there. In 1775 he
enlisted with the Lithuanian Footmen's Guard, and left the military three years later with the rank of
officer cadet.

Career

1778-1790

Bogusławski embarked on his theatre career in 1778 by joining the troupe of Ludwik Montbrum, where he
made his stage debut, and where his two-act, opera adaptation of Franciszek Bohomolec's cantata Nędza
uszczęśliwiona (Misery Made Happy) was very well received.
In 1781 he began performing in Lviv with Agnieszka and Tomasz Truskolaski's troupe, but quickly returned
to Warsaw. He was hired by the Polish National Theatre in 1782 and became its director a year later (1782–
84), proving to be an enterprising impresario by organizing tours to cities like Grodno and Dubno. During
this period he also established his own theatre in Poznań with the support of Stanisław August Poniatowski,
but the venture quickly collapsed. He became a Freemason.

In 1785 Bogusławski founded another theatre in Vilnius, which he managed for the next five years. Among
the plays he staged were Franciszek Zabłocki's Fircyk w zalotach (The Dandy's Courtship) (1785), and in
1786 gave the Polish premiere of Pierre Beaumarchais's scandalously revolutionary play The Marriage of
Figaro. In Vilnius he assembled a troupe of accomplished actors whom he took with him when he returned
to Warsaw, where he resumed directorship of the National Theatre.

1790-1794

His second term as director of this institution, lasting from 1790 to the fall of the Kościuszko Uprising in
1794, consisted of building a real national stage with an artistic, social and civic mission. Boguslawski saw
theatre primarily as a force for good, treating it as a platform for disseminating nationalist ideals: during the
turbulent Great Sejm, 1788–92, state reforms were the subject of many productions at the National Theatre.
A supporter of the reformist camp, Bogusławski created a repertoire addressing matters he saw as most
important to Poles. During this period he also wrote for the theatre. After staging Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz's
Powrót posla (The Return of the Deputy) (1791), Poland's first-ever political comedy, he wrote and staged a
sequel to this drama titled Dowód wdzięczności narodu (Proof of the Nation's Appreciation) (1791) and
followed this with Józef Wybicki's Szlachcic Mieszczaninem (The Noble Bourgeois) (1791).

He also wrote and staged Henryk vi na Lowach (Henry VI on a Hunting Excursion) (1792) and his most
famous work, Cud mniemany, Czyli krakowiacy i górale (The Presumed Miracle, or Krakovians and
Highlanders) (1794), Poland's first-ever opera, which he set to music by Stefani. Premiering on the eve of
the Kościuszko Uprising, the production was banned by censors after just three performances. However, the
public immediately understood the political allusions and soon people in Warsaw's streets were singing
passages from “Krakovians”.

"The faces of vile traitors like Szczęsny Potocki, Kossakowski, Ożarowski, Zabiełło,
Ankwicz and their henchmen exuded falseness (...)," wrote Antoni Trebicki of the
production at the National. "What could be more comedic and better embody the
preposterousness of all those imposed rulers of our kingdom as their collectively
issued permission to play the farce 'Krakovians,' which happened to be written when it
was, encouraged insurrection and publicly announced to those gentlemen what would
actually happen to them imminently."[3]

Bogusławski was due to be arrested for staging “The Presumed Miracle/Krakovians and Highlanders,” but
apparently escaped through the intervention of the Royal Marshall Moszynski.

1794-1799

Following the uprising’s collapse Bogusławski left Warsaw for Lviv, taking a substantial part of the theatre's
costumes, props and the theatre's library with him. In Lviv he started another Polish theatre which operated
under his guidance until 1799. Following extended negotiations with local censors he once again staged
“Krakovians and Highlanders” in 1796, following this with a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1797.
In 1797 he also mounted an interesting production of his own melodrama titled Iskahar, Król Guaxary
(Iskahar, King of Guaxara).
 "Bogusławski Polonized 'Hamlet' and other dramas because the theatre of the
Enlightenment, following a practice as old as the world, adapted works by the world's
great geniuses to its own tastes. The works were Polonized because it was believed
that viewers would not be stunned by the strangeness and exoticism of foreign
customs only if they saw themselves as if in a mirror on stage."[4]

Bogusławski introduced Classical tragedies to the Polish stage and did the same for Shakespeare, mounting
productions based on translations and adaptations of the Bard's works. He also wrote several original plays
and translated, adapted, modified and adjusted to Polish realities many French, German, English and Italian
plays. All told, he authored more than eighty tragedies, comedies, dramas and opera librettos.

Bogusławski was a proponent of classical French principles initially, but later shifted his focus to moralizing
German dramas that he saw as being closer to life. He directed the plays of Jean Racine, Molière, Voltaire,
Pierre Beaumarchais, Denis Diderot, Friedrich Schiller and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. His interests not
being limited to an ambitious repertoire, he also staged melodramas and vaudevilles that drew sizeable
audiences as well as operas and ballets.

Bogusławski would almost immediately establish a Polish stage wherever he traveled, and these new
theatres would continue to function as independent institutions after his departure.

"To erect a theatre wherever it was possible to perform in Polish and to perform in
Polish as far as this was possible, and in performing what was necessary and when it
was necessary, to proclaim and always remember that one had emerged from Warsaw
and to Warsaw one would return" – this was his creative and organizational credo.[5]

Actors who emerged from his "school" also founded new theatres. He taught his collaborators gesture and
diction while constantly promoting greater naturalness in acting. Bogusławski helped many actors to
develop their talents, his protégés including Kazimierz Owsinski, Alojzy Żółkowski, Agnieszka and Tomasz
Truskolaski, Franciszka Pierożyńska, Bonawentura Kudlicz, Józefa Ledóchowska, Ludwik Dmuszewski and
many others.

As an actor, he began by playing leading men, but his greatest acting triumphs came later, during his second
term as director of the National Theatre, playing Old Dominic in "Taczka Occiarza" (1793 – his own
adaptation of Sebastian Mercier's play "La Brouette de Vinagrier"), Ferdinand Kokiel in "Henry VI on a
Hunting Excursion" and Bardos in "Krakovians and Highlanders". Though all these roles were common
folk, Boguslawski was equally convincing as elderly characters, rulers or tyrants, and he played King Lear
in Shakespeare's tragedy (1805), King Axur in Axur, a drama set to music by Antonio Salieri (1793), and
Old Horace in Pierre Corneille's Horace (1793).

As a stage director, Bogusławski was adept at working with designers and musicians. He cooperated
frequently with painters Antoni Smuglewicz, Jan Bogumił Plersch, Innocento Maraino and Antonio Scottio,
and with exceptional musicians like Józef Elsner and Karol Kurpiński. His most interesting productions
were those where he shaped multiple aspects – as writer and director, and often appearing in the leading
role.

1799-1814

In 1799 Boguslawski returned to Warsaw and became director of the National Theatre for the third time,
retaining this position until 1814. During this period he also performed in a number of other Polish cities,
including Poznań, Kalisz, Łowicz, Kraków and Gdańsk. He remained a favorite of vast segments of the
audience, although critics increasingly accused him of manifesting "vulgar tastes".
In 1811 he organized Poland's first School of Drama, simultaneously writing a textbook titled Dramaturgia,
czyli nauka sztuki scenicznej dla Szkoły Teatralnej napisana przez Wojciecha Bogusławskiego w Warszawie
1812 (Dramaturgy, or an Instructional Stage Art Program for a Theatre School Written by Wojciech
Bogusławski in Warsaw in 1812).

In 1814 he handed over his National Theatre "enterprise" to Ludwik Osiński, but remained linked to the
theatre. Initially, he performed with his own troupe at the National Theatre, but later also appeared on other
stages, including that in Vilnius. Toward the end of his life he wrote and published his Dzieje Teatru
Narodowego (Annals of The National Theatre), and also compiled and printed his Dzieła Dramatyczne
(Dramatic Works). Wojciech Bogusławski made his last stage appearance in 1827.

Death
He died on 23 July 1829, age 72, at Warsaw.

He was commemorated on a Polish postage stamp issued as part of a

set depicting dramatists in 1978.[6]

See also
List of Poles

References
1. Michael J. Mikoś, Polish Baroque and Enlightenment
literature: an anthology, Slavica Publishers, 1996. Powązki Cemetery
2. John A Rice, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera, Univ. of
Chicago, 1998.
3. "100 przedstawien w opisach polskich autorow" [100 Performances as Described by Polish
Authors], edited by Z. Raszewski, Wrocław, 1993.
4. Anna Kuligowska, "Rzeczpospolita" daily, 18 November 2005.
5. Z. Krawczykowski, "Wojciech Bogusławski", Warsaw, 1954
6. Stanley Gibbons Stamps of the World, 2010 ed.

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